On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:45:47PM +1000, Da Rock wrote: > 1. Incidentally, what exactly does constitute a major release?
That point in time where we guarantee that we break a certain degree of backwards compatibility. (Well, that's the key component. Feature- additions ride on top of that.) > 2. Is there a reason to update the numbers so quickly? Yes, so that we don't have to keep supporting backwards compatibility for as long a period (see 1) -- it's a significant burden to maintain. It's necessary to do these as we rework things like network layers for higher performance, rework wireless to work with modern devices, and other high-demand items. > 3. Could a higher bar be set to reach a major release than simply > temporal objectives? Yes. We did that with 5.x, and blew it big-time. The goal of "rewrite the entire system to support SMP in a scalable, reliable fashion" was simply too aggressive. It led to ~5 years between major releases, and by that time the system had changed very dramatically (SMP, suspend/resume, IIRC GEOM, and too many other things to list). It was a huge jump and the learning curve for upgrading was way too large. We lost userbase. Also, keeping 5 years between major releases led to very high developer frustration. Why work on something when it will take 4+ years to even see the light of day? This is why we moved to the time-based releases. 18 months was seen as a compromise between all the various demands. Even so, we are almost exactly at 24 months in practice; see the graphs I updated last month as a result of all the recent discussion: http://people.freebsd.org/~linimon/schedule/ My own view is that 5 years between major releases is not going to happen, due to how painful the 5.x experience was for all concerned. But as I'm not a src committer, I'm not one of the people who will be picking the interval for our major-branch timeline. I just try to graph it as it goes by. mcl _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
